The Queen's Revenge
by Piont23
Summary: When a quest to take down some eidolons goes horribly wrong, all of the heroes find themselves in each other's bodies with no way back. If they can't find a way to break the spell, they'll be cursed to spend the rest of their lives as a different person.


Reyna

Reyna thought she'd gotten over her fear of ghosts.

She was wrong.

When she first heard about this mission it chilled her to the bone. A team was needed to look into the otherworldly happenings up in Amityville, famed for its hauntings. It had seemed like a good opportunity to face her fears at the time, but now entering Amityville she was having second thoughts. Too late to turn back, though.

"Alright, people! Let's review the plan!" Annabeth shouted from the front of the bus. The other nine on the bus stared up at her. Reyna thought that it was way too many demigods for a quest, albeit a short one, but Annabeth and Chiron had insisted. They said that this threat would be impossible to take care of with only three people. So Annabeth, Percy, Piper, Jason, Hazel, Frank, Will, Nico, Grover, and Reyna had all set off in a bus to investigate the weird happenings.

It was unlike anything they'd seen before. It seemed to stem from the Amityville House, with all of the people nearby suddenly acting bizarre, randomly attacking each other and vandalizing the city. Soon all of the surrounding streets were behaving like that, and eventually the whole city. They didn't know what was causing it exactly, but their best guess was that eidolons were responsible.

She'd never dealt with them personally, but she hated them anyway. They were the reason for the Roman march on Camp Half-Blood. They had the power to possess anyone, making them do whatever they wished. Their job was to find the source of the eidolons and make it stop.

"Does everyone have their amulet?" Annabeth continued. Everyone raised up their necklace. The children of Hecate and Hephaestus had worked together to make these magic amulets, which (if they worked properly) would protect them from possession. "And everyone's weapons were checked by the Hypnos cabin?"

A chorus of nods and shouts of affirmation answered her. The idea was this: soak everyone's weapons in water from the River Lethe, and when the eidolons were hit, they would forget everything. Because eidolons were basically ghosts seeking revenge, if they forgot what they were angry about, they'd just turn into regular spirits, which couldn't do much of anything. It made Reyna's sword ten times more dangerous, and she was almost scared to hold it. One hit from the Lethe and she'd forget everything about herself and her friends.

"Our job is simple: just get in, and get out. We are now entering Amityville, so soon we'll have to-" Annabeth was interrupted by their driver Argus, who started to moan in pain. "Argus?" she asked, concerned.

Suddenly all of the eyes across his body lit up gold. "We will live again," a hollow voice echoed from within him.

"Eidolon!" Piper shouted. Argus jerked the steering wheel to the right, and the bus shot off the road straight into someone's house.

"Is everyone okay?" Will asked.

"You will not be!" Argus said, shambling towards Percy.

"Everybody off the bus!" Percy shouted in response, and all ten of them sprinted away into the streets of Amityville.

As they ran along, Reyna started to see strange wisps of smoke floating along the streets, with glowing golden spots like searchlights. Eidolons that hadn't gone into a human body yet. They rushed up to her group, but the amulets sparked and the eidolons hissed. They slashed at the ghosts and the golden light faded. This might just work, if they could get to the source.

They made their way through the town, taking down eidolons the whole time. Reyna felt like her amulet was heating up, but that was ridiculous. This was top-notch Hephaestus work. A few ghosts couldn't possibly make it malfunction.

Suddenly a specter unlike all the others appeared. Rather than a shapeless wisp, it looked startlingly human. A girl in her early twenties, perhaps. She stared at them with manic, desperate eyes. "Help me!" she screeched. "Those horrible things, they took my body! Get it back! Get it back!"

"That's not right," Percy mumbled.

"Obviously. This is sick," Grover answered.

"No, I get what Percy means," Jason said. "The eidolons aren't supposed to push the soul out of the body. They're just supposed to share the body and take control."

"So then why is that girl's soul outside of her body?" Will asked.

"These eidolons are probably more powerful than the ones we faced back in Rome," Frank suggested. "Maybe powerful enough to totally steal a body."

"Well, that's fabulous," Piper growled, stabbing her knife into another eidolon.

"Come on, we're almost to the house," Hazel told them, and they rushed up the street.

Suddenly it stood before them: an ominous farmhouse on the edge of town. One of the most haunted places in the world. Reyna could feel the dark magic emanating from it, like a hungry demon. "Let's go," Nico said, and they ran forward until the stood at the doorway.

"There are too many of them!" Reyna said. There were so many eidolons swirling around them it was like they made up the air. Her necklace was burning hot against her skin, like an iron.

Grover kicked down the door to the house with his hoof and they stumbled inside, attacking everything around them. "Where do we go now?" Percy asked.

"You're not going anywhere!" a female voice cackled, and a glowing woman appeared in the room. She was beautiful, though in a scary way, with features that were too sharp and angular. Her long brown hair was streaked with gray, flowing all the way down her back. She was tall and horribly skinny, with spindly arms and an impossibly tiny waist. She wore a flowing white gown that reached her feet, though it almost looked like she was floating just a centimeter above the ground. Reyna tried to focus on her but ended up seeing right through her; she was transparent. She must have been a ghost. Then Reyna realized something even more horrible: her eyes were glowing gold in the dim light. An eidolon, but one with its own physical form.

"Who are you?" Annabeth asked.

The woman cackled and drifted closer. "You're supposed to be the smart one, Annabeth. And yet you don't recognize me?"

"How do you know my name?"

"I know all of you. My spies have been within your heads!" she barked at them.

Hazel staggered back like she'd been physically struck. "They've...what?"

"My eidolons know all your little secrets. You can't escape us!"

"Where did all of these eidolons come from?" Nico asked, slashing through another spirit with his sword.

"Many anguished souls in the Underworld have the potential to become eidolons. I just helped show them the light and brought them through!" She gestured to a room behind her. Looking closely, Reyna could see it didn't lead to the kitchen. It lead to a deep, dark pit that smelled of death. A passage to the Underworld. "And when they come through...oh, they taste so sweet! Such raw power. Too much for any of them to handle," she muttered.

"So you steal it for yourself," Grover theorized.

"That's none of your business, little satyr!"

"You still didn't answer my question," Annabeth said. "Who are you?"

"My name is Clytemnestra," the woman told them. The name rang a bell for Reyna, though she couldn't quite place it. Annabeth seemed to recognize it, though.

"You became an eidolon after you were murdered?" Annabeth asked.

"Don't ask stupid questions, girl! It is plain as day." Suddenly, Clytemnestra was an inch away from Annabeth, holding her face in a ghostly hand. Annabeth's necklace was sparking like crazy trying to keep her away. "I will live again!" she hissed, and with a loud pop Annabeth's amulet shattered and fell to the floor.

Clytemnestra surged forward into Annabeth, seeming absorbed through her skin. Annabeth shuddered and jerked around, screaming. "Annabeth!" Percy shouted, running up to her, but he stopped when a ghost shot out of Annabeth like a bullet. "Annabeth?" Percy said aloud, dumbstruck, as the ghost that used to be his girlfriend floated around aimlessly.

"A perfect fit!" Clytemnestra said in Annabeth's voice, examining her new body. She tilted her head, as though accessing Annabeth's mind. "Daughter of Athena...ooh! A favorite of Chiron, that's useful. And...no powers?" Clytemnestra looked shocked. "Well, that won't do at all!" She eyed the other girls in the room. "Reyna Avila Ramirez-Arellano," she mumbled, eyeing Reyna. "Practically useless." She moved on to Hazel. "Ah, Hazel Levesque. Very powerful, though geokinesis will do little for me." She looked at the final girl in the room. "Piper McLean. Charmspeak! Now that is a valuable talent. I can get anything I want with you as my vessel!" The spirit of Clytemnestra zoomed out of Annabeth, whose body crumpled to the floor, empty of a soul.

Suddenly, the ghost of Annabeth let out a ferocious roar and tackled Clytemnestra in midair, pulling them both to the floor.

As they wrestled on the ground, Reyna felt a strange pulling in her gut, but she felt that it wasn't physical. It was her soul, straining to move in the direction of Annabeth's body. It was some kind of a vacuum, Reyna realized. A living body demanded a soul, so her body was trying to pull one from anywhere possible. "Gah!" she screamed, as her soul left her own body.

She couldn't "see" exactly, because she didn't have eyes. But she could sense the world around her in some other way, as though she felt the other spirits around her. She soared across the room against her will, and her normal sight returned. She was laying on the ground of the room. She stood shakily and looked around. When she saw her own body laying on the floor, she knew with sickening certainty she was now in Annabeth's body. Suddenly Frank fell and his spirit went into Reyna's body. Jason into Frank. Will into Jason. Annabeth into Will. Everyone was switching bodies like crazy, trying to fill the constant void. Clytemnestra was in the mix too, easily identifiable by her golden eyes.

Reyna was getting vertigo from switching from body to body. But a soul couldn't get vertigo...all of the bodies must have been suffering from it. "Hazel!" she shouted through Grover's mouth.

"Yes?" Percy answered.

"No, Hazel's body!" Reyna continued, this time through Piper.

"I'm in here!" Hazel said. Well, her body did. Reyna didn't know who was inside. Gods, this was confusing.

"Use your powers! Bring down the tunnel!"

"I don't think so!" Jason said, his eyes glowing gold. Clytemnestra must have been within. She started to summon a storm, but Clytemnestra moved on to another body before she could finish.

"I don't know how!" the person in Hazel's body said. It was probably someone else now.

"Then Nico?" somebody else said. Reyna couldn't tell who it was, her vision was swimming too much.

"I'm over here!" That was strange, it sounded like Reyna's own voice. Then she realized Nico must have been in her body. "And I don't have Hazel's powers. I can't close the hole."

"Don't even try!" Frank screamed. Clytemnestra must have been inside. "I will take your bodies!"

If possible, she was switching even more rapidly now. It paused for a moment and she felt that she was in Hazel's body. Enormous power was building up within her, surely enough to destroy the pit. She tried to exert it through her hands, but suddenly she was back in her own body. She thought maybe they were done switching around, but then she was wearing Percy's skin.

"Submit!" Clytemnestra shouted with Nico's lips.

"Never!" Hazel screamed back, slapping her hands together. The pit closed like someone had zipped it up, and Nico wailed, though his eyes still glowed gold. All of the eidolons in the room disappeared, and Reyna's soul seemed firmly roots in her body.

She noticed that Piper's spirit wasn't in a body yet, floating above their heads. Piper saw that Clytemnestra was in Nico's body and she charged at the teenage boy, going straight through him. Piper stayed inside while Clytemnestra popped out the other side. Her form was becoming fuzzy and indistinct with her power source shut off. "My power!" she screeched, clawing at the ground where her passage to the Underworld had closed up, though her ghostly hands couldn't make a dent in the hard packed dirt. She turned back to them. "You will pay for this, demigods!"

"I don't think so," Grover said. He normally wasn't the type to confront people like that. "Just face it; you lost!"

"Oh, but I'm not the only one who was cheated out of a body today! Look at yourselves!" she shrieked, and Reyna suddenly realized what she meant.

She wasn't Reyna.

She was Percy.

They had stopped switching bodies, and none of them were in the right one.

Everyone was looking down at themselves with horrified expressions. She couldn't tell who was in each body, but clearly no one was pleased.

And she was in stuck in Percy. Percy, of all people! Being turned into a boy was not on the agenda for the day.

"I can easily change you back," Clytemnestra said, spreading her arms wide, though they looked more like wisps of smoke now. "Simply restore my power, and I'll undo the curse! Provided you also sacrifice a powerful female to me. Doesn't have to be one of you, even! Someone you dislike, maybe."

"In your dreams, witch!" Will spat at her. Someone abrasive was in there for sure. "We can undo any spell. We know masters of magic. Pretty much everybody in the Hecate Cabin, and even Hazel!" He gestured at the small girl.

"Sorry, bro, but I sort of don't know how," Hazel said. Well, that was definitely not how she normally talked. Was that Jason in there? Percy?

"And you cannot contact the Hecate Cabin for help here! This is an eidolon curse, and it can only be healed through the ways of the eidolons!" Clytemnestra shouted at them. She was seriously fading now, barely more than a cloud.

"And what is the way of the eidolons?" Jason asked.

"Deception! Deceit and lies! So you must follow their ways if you want any hope of having this reversed."

"Meaning?" Piper asked.

"Meaning that no one outside of this room can discover what has happened here! Only if it remains a secret will you have the slightest chance of fixing things."

"So no one can know that we switched bodies," Frank said. "We have to figure it out on our own."

"Or just submit to me and all of your problems are solved!" she screamed. She looked just like a regular eidolon now, a smoky gray cloud with glowing golden eyes. "If not, well, enjoy the rest of your life!" she cackled, and she evaporated into nothingness.

"Who was she?" Grover asked.

"Clytemnestra," Jason said, sheathing his sword. "Chiron used to make me read Greek plays when I was younger," he told them. "She was the main villain in the play Oresteia."

"Wait a second," Annabeth asked. "Chiron? Who's in there?"

"I'm Annabeth. The real Annabeth," Jason explained. "Anyway, she was seriously crazy. She killed her husband, Euripides, and the princess of Troy, Cassandra. Then she got murdered by her son, but she kept wreaking havoc even in death. I didn't know she became an eidolon, though."

Reyna tried to get over how weird it was to see Jason talking just like Annabeth. The words just didn't fit in his mouth quite right.

"How do we undo this?" Will asked, though Reyna recalled it was really Nico.

"We'll have to do some research when we get back," Reyna added. "Knowledge and cleverness are the key to solving any problem." She noticed everyone casting her weird looks. Then she remembered she was Percy. "I'm Reyna, by the way."

"Until we do that, how do we keep people from finding out about us?" Piper asked.

"Just act exactly like the person you're in the body of," Grover suggested. "That's all we can do until we figure out how to fix this."

They started trudging back towards their bus, confused mortals wandering past them sometimes. They would stare at Grover's legs for a second, then shake their heads and move on.

They'd accomplished their goal and saved the town. But they themselves were anything but saved.


End file.
